Uri Avnery: Spot the Difference

Spot the Difference

A MAN was asked
about his sons. “I have three,” he said, “but one of
them is a complete idiot.”

“Which one?” they
asked.

“Take your pick,” he replied.

In 51 days, we
shall vote for a new Knesset and a new government.

Three
big parties are competing for the prize: Kadima, Likud and
Labor.

From there on, see the joke.

IS THERE a real
choice? In other words, are there any real differences
between the three parties?

As in the game “Spot the
Difference”, they are so tiny that one needs really good
eyes to discover them.

There are, of course, political
differences between the three. But what the three parties,
and the three leaders, have in common is far more important
than what divides them.

Binyamin Netanyahu says that this
is not the time for peace with the Palestinians. We have to
wait until conditions are ripe. Not on our side, of course,
but on the Palestinian side. And who is going to decide
whether the conditions are ripe on the Palestinian side?
Binyamin Netanyahu, of course. He or his successors, or the
successors of his successors.

Tzipi Livni says – or so
it seems – the very opposite. We have to talk with the
Palestinians. What about? Not about Jerusalem, God forbid.
And not about the refugees. So about what? About the
weather, perhaps? Tzipi’s plan, one has to conclude, is to
go on talking and talking and talking, and never to reach
any practical agreement.

Ehud Barak has not withdrawn his
fateful pronouncement of eight years ago, when he came back
from the failed (thanks to him) Camp David conference: “We
have no partner for peace.”

Not one of the three has
stood up and told the public in simple words: I am going to
make peace with the Palestinians in the course of 2009. This
peace will include the establishment of a Palestinian state
based on the pre-1967 borders, with agreed minor border
changes on the basis of 1:1, turning Jerusalem into the
capital of the two states and agreeing on a reasonable
solution of the refugee problem, a solution Israel can live
with.

Not one of the three has offered any peace plan at
all. Only hollow words. Only spin.

Like the alternative
offered by Netanyahu: to ameliorate the living conditions of
the Palestinians. Living conditions under occupation? When
600 roadblocks in the West Bank prevent free movement? When
every violent act of resistance leads to collective
punishment? When death-squads go out in the night to
liquidate “wanted men”? Only a madman would invest money
in such a territory.

ALL THE THREE are united in their
view that Hamas must be eliminated. True, not one of them
declares publicly that the Gaza Strip should be reoccupied
– something that is wildly unpopular both with the public
and the army chiefs. But all three support the tight
blockade on the Gaza Strip, believing that if the population
has no bread and the hospitals no medicaments or fuel, the
Gaza public will rise up and overthrow the Hamas regime. For
now, the opposite is happening. This week a quarter of a
million people – almost half the adult population of the
Strip! – took part in a rally to celebrate the birthday of
Hamas.

Not one of the three has stood up and said: I shall
talk with Hamas and bring them into the peace
process.

Neither did one of the three get up and say: I
shall make peace with Syria in the course of 2009. The terms
are known, I accept them, I intend to sign.

Perhaps all
three of them secretly think so. But each of them tells
himself/herself: “What, am I crazy? To take on the Golan
settlers and their supporters in Israel?” Someone who is
not prepared to remove even one miserable outpost in the
West Bank, for fear of a clash with the fanatical settlers
there, will not take any such risk on the Golan Heights
either.

ON THE other hand, all three have the same
emergency exit: the Iranian bomb. What would we do without
it! “The main danger to the existence of Israel is the
Iranian bomb!” declares Barak. Declares Tzipi. Declares
Netanyahu. A finely attuned choir.

Since the beginnings of
Zionism, it has been looking for ways to escape from the
“Palestinian problem”. Why? Because if the Zionist
movement had admitted that there even exists a Palestinian
people, it would have had to find a solution to the actual
situation and to the moral problem. Therefore, a hundred
different pretexts have been found, each in its time, to
ignore the dilemma.

Nowadays the Iranian bomb fulfils this
function. Here is a clear and present danger. An existential
danger. Stop bothering me about the Palestinian problem.
Nothing urgent there. It can be postponed for a few years
(or a few generations). The Iranian bomb is what needs
immediate attention. After we solve this problem (it’s not
clear how) we shall be free to deal with the Palestinian
nuisance.

Logic, of course, says the opposite. If we sign
a peace agreement with the entire Palestinian people and put
an end to the occupation, the Persian rug will be swept from
under the feet of Ahmadinejad and the likes of him. When the
Palestinians recognize Israel and make peace, the
anti-Israeli Crusade (or, rather, Crescentade) will lose its
steam.

OK, SO in matters of war and peace there is no
difference between the three. But what about the other
issues?

The economic crisis fills the headlines. All the
candidates promise to deal with it. To find any difference
between their pronouncements, one would need a
microscope.

One might have expected Netanyahu to be
different from the others. After all, he was the High Priest
of privatization. To privatize everything, from steel cables
to shoestrings. This dogma has now collapsed in the United
States, and is collapsing in Israel too. Does this bother
Netanyahu? Does it make him more humble? Not in the least.
Now he demands, without batting an eyelid, massive state
intervention. Like Livni. Like Barak.

State and religion?
Not one of the three demands separation between them. Not
one demands civil marriage, or the rolling back of religious
coercion, or the calling up of thousands of yeshiva
students. Not one demands the inclusion of the core subjects
– like English and mathematics – in the curriculum of
the state-financed religious schools. God forbid! God
forbid! After all, all of them will need Shas and/or the
Orthodox party tomorrow.

The Arab citizens? All of the
parties court them ardently. But not one of them promises
them anything real. Real equality? Only in words. Cultural
autonomy? Of course not. The implementation of the
recommendations of the government commission of inquiry that
was appointed after the October 2000 killings? Not a
chance!

And the list goes on. Subject after subject.

SO
IS THERE really no difference between the three? Is a vote
for one of them the same as a vote for any of the other
two?

I would not go that far.

There are small
differences – but when we are dealing with fateful
matters, even a small difference is
significant.

Netanyahu, for example, brings with him a
very rightist crew. They include fascist elements that must
not be ignored. There is a danger that he would set up a
government that would include “extreme-right” (meaning:
outright fascist) parties, on top of the rightist-orthodox
Shas party. His victory would signal to the whole world that
Israel has chosen the path to the abyss. It may also bring
up the possibility – the nightmare of Israeli politics –
of a clash with the United States, now led by Barack
Obama.

The battered (and rightly so) Labor Party at least
includes a social-democratic element that makes it different
from the other two. It is weak but not entirely
insignificant.

Kadima, that cross-breed of leftist
rightists and rightist leftists, is in spite of everything
better than Likud, from which most of its candidates have
sprung. Netanyahu and Livni grew on the same tree, but on
different branches. Tzipi may still surprise us for the
better. If Netanyahu springs any surprises at all, that
would be a miracle.

Aside from the three big ones, there
are, of course, several smaller one-issue parties, each in
its own niche, which address specific sectors of the public
and which have at least a clear and honest message: the Arab
parties, Meretz, the Orthodox list, Shas, the Liberman
party, the “Jewish Home” (formerly National-Religious
party). Probably they will be joined by some new election
lists. Each of them is a story in itself, but none of them
will set up the next government.

The real story is between
the Three Big, and it is a sad story indeed.

The choice
between them is a choice between bad, worse and still worse.
Between toothache, migraine and backache.

Nothing good
will come out of this election. The question is only how bad
the results will be.

THE CONCLUSION: This must not happen
again!

Quite probably, the next Knesset, too, will not
last for more than a year or two. Then there would be new
elections, which might well be fateful.

On February 11,
2009, the day after the coming elections, those who seek
change must start to think anew. Those who long for a
democratic, secular, progressive Israel, an Israel at peace
with its neighbors and imbued with social justice within,
must decide to take matters into their own hands,

They
must start a new intellectual and organizational effort to
realize these important aims. No longer to be satisfied with
voting for the “lesser evil” but finally to vote for the
greater good, and - together with sectors that have not been
partners up till now - to work out solutions that have not
yet been tried in ways that have not yet been tried. To
bring about an Obama-like miracle.

Instead of the three
good-for-nothing sons, a fourth son must
appear.

*************

Uri Avnery is a journalist, peace activist, former member of
the Knesset, and leader of Gush
Shalom. He is a regular contributor to Scoop.
You can email correspondence to correspondence @ gush -
shalom . org (without the
spaces).

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